The Speculator plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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67° on Nov. 11, 1948, the hottest reading for this week of the year since 1899. Next is 66° in 2020.
Speculator’s center stands about 2,170 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,680 ft to 2,880 ft, a difference of 1,200 ft: steep hill country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Snowy Mountain, about 3,870 ft, 9 miles north.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Undivided metasedimentary rock and related migmatite (metasedimentary, migmatite), from the Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old.
The section below crosses 6 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 8×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Charnockite, gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 10 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Gneiss. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Metasedimentary, migmatite. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Gneiss, metasedimentary. Age: Mesoproterozoic, 1 to 1.6 billion years old. About 0.7 mi of the line.
Dolostone. Age: Cambrian to Early Ordovician, 471 to 497 million years old. About 0.5 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Speculator reaches New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Whitaker Lake Outlet, the Jessup, the Indian and the Hudson: about 310 river miles.
Lake on the way: Lewey Lake.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Speculator; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Speculator has a warm-summer humid continental climate. Summer afternoons average 75° in July; winter nights fall to about 6° in January. A normal year brings about 102 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 44 inches of water.
On November 14 Speculator normally reaches 42° and falls to 26°. The record high is 59°, in 2010; the record low 3°, in 1996. The most rain on this date, 1.20 in, fell in 1949.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1899 at Indian Lake 2 SW, 13 miles north-northeast, 500 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
